I try to keep my locations as real as possible. They are very important to the feel of the story.

The houses that Emily grew up in and lived in after she came back from Washington are real houses, though not at the location in the stories.My mother worked for MIT Press at a time when the press was publishing a series of book on the architecture of Cambridge.

I spent a week one summer looking for the buildings I wanted to use. I found the locations I wanted and then went to visit them. I walked from one to the other as my character did. I was surprised to find that Dana Street had a slope when I remember it as being flat.

I spent so much time trying to figure out what was inside "The Villa" I thought I might be arrested for loitering. The "Cottage" was a bit easier to scope out. It really is on a busy street corner, but I moved it to a more sedate location further up Dana Street.

The church she and her family attended still stands. My mother was a member.On the other hand the area she lived and worked in Washington have been cleared and rebuilt. I have a photo of the back of what would have been the office building. The church she attended in Washington move its location twice. The newest building postdates her return to Cambridge. Never the less, I knew where everything had been and I walked all those distances as well. I went to see the Dunkin' Donuts where the church had stood, the new office building that was where Lawrence Research had been.

The house I chose for them to purchase when they had enough money to move out of Mrs. Johnson's place is (I think) the house Mathew Brady lived in on Maryland Avenue. I have seen it only in photographs, since the whole area has been redeveloped.

I have to do and see all the things my characters do and see. I always have a real location in mind even if the fictional location is vague. Maybe I should have a guess the location game in the back of the book.

At the beginning of my short story collection The Case Book of Emily Lawrence, Emily and Charles live in the attic of an old house. The 'necessary' is two flights down and in the back yard. By the end of the book she lives in a house with hot running water and flush toilets.

How did I come to understand what it was like living without these comforts? And how do I teach who come to visit the Miller's House?

On Friday I have to get myself into period clothing and talk to school kids about what it was like to live in the Miller's House in the 1740s. Perhaps it is a give back for all the things I've learned working at these sites. More likely I love telling people what I know about the past.

How do you get a kid to appreciate what they see in a room full of antiques, where they can't touch anything because of its fragility and its value? I do it by asking questions. I am a regular Socrates.

My favorite "what do you think this is?" is the chamber pot. The most frequent answer? "It is for holding snacks in case you get hungry in the night." Good idea, it is rodent proof and convenient. But no.

When I was a kid we spent two weeks every summer at our grandparent's cabin on a New Hampshire lake. Electricity had been installed before I was born when some great aunt fell down the stairs with a kerosene lantern and nearly burned the place down. My father installed running water in an out building one summer when I was in high school. My jobs were to do the slops (clean out the chamber pots) and walk a quarter mile to the spring for drinking water. I had to do this daily rain or shine. The up side was that I seldom had to do dishes or sweep or make beds.

Few people today have much appreciation for how dark it can get at night. I can go out for walks at any time without carrying a flashlight. Colors fade to gray, but most everything else is quite clear in the light of street lamps, car headlights, porch lights and sky glow from the city. It is not difficult to get down the stairs and out the back door to the necessary at midnight.

For the miller and his family, unless the moon was full, they would have to use artificial light to get down the stairs in total darkness. Yes, they could light a candle, but not with matches. No matches yet. There might be coals in the fireplace if they had had a fire there in the evening. Have you ever tried to start a fire with a flint and steal? I think the record is 31 seconds. It takes me half an hour. You strike sparks off a piece of metal with a piece of flint. If you are lucky the flint doesn’t cut your hand. The spark has to land just so in a prepared bit of lint set in wood shavings.

And have you considered the cost of candles? Not in dollars but in effort and the use of scarce resources? Where do candles come from? The questions can go on and on.

Two events have lit up my life. I finally learned the 150th move in the Tai Chi form. I've been working on it for five years. Most people do it in 18 months or so.

Then, while still in the glow of that, I opened my email this morning and there was the cover to The Case Book of Emily Lawrence. I've been writing Emily stories for over 20 years, and while she has made her way into print several times, this is the first time she and I have had a whole book of our own.

You see the theme here? Persistence. These were two things I wanted to have happen and I stuck it out until they did. Oh, and did I mention hard work? The phrase "everything comes to he who waits" popped into my mind. But if I had waited for either of these things to happen they never would have. I worked hard for both of them.

My first week in Tai Chi I knew I would never be great at it. I couldn't remember the moves from class well enough to practice them at home. I was afraid of learning them the wrong way. My teacher, Bryan Davis, kept me interested, and continued to encourage me even when I couldn't seem to get the knack of it. He teaches Tai Chi as a martial art in which the aim is to unbalance your opponent and then run away. That's my kind of martial art. There were plenty of benefits to going to class every week. My blood pressure lowered, my balance improved, my sciatica hardly ever bothered me and when it did a simple Tai Chi move made it go away. In Tai Chi, finishing the form is just the beginning.

This morning I opened an email to find the cover for The Case Book of Emily Lawrence. Emily first made it onto paper over 20 years ago. She was the first fictional character I came up with. Part me, part Sherlock Holmes, part Alice in Wonderland, totally her own woman, she solved a case of blackmail and murder. Since the original novel (which will remain unpublished) she has gone on to solve about 50 cases in a series of short stories. The best of them are in The Case Book. But there is a long road between pulling a bunch of short stories together into a manuscript and ending with a book you can hold in your hands.

It's been an interesting few weeks, but little of it had to do with writing. Every few of days I have dragged out a short story I started a couple of years ago and did a bit of reworking. Now it needs to have other eyes on it. I am blind to certain possible errors. I'm looking for volunteers.

I have a penchant for reading other people's work before it is published. (The last one was Kaye George's Requiem in Red.)

I will read the first part of anybody's story but I have learned to set a limit. If I don't like the piece for any reason, I will stop reading after 3500 words, the length of one of my short stories. It may be a fine work that simply doesn’t appeal to me. It may be a flawed piece that needs lots of work, but the author thinks it is wonderful the way it is.

I am going to be honest about what I think. So if you believe your work is perfect the way it is and only want me to tell you that, don't give it to me to read.

I like particularly historicals that have yet to be published. If I like something enough I will review it on Amazon. In fact I was finally able to post a review of a book I loved but wasn't to be published for some time. (Delivering Truth by Edith Maxwell. I loved it. Take a look)

There is something to be said for reading pre-published works where I have particular insight into the world. I have a pretty good idea of how 19th century machinery worked, and how farm and housework with done. I can pick up words that seem out of place. In fact, words that are perfectly appropriate to the 19th century like Kid and OK, can feel out of place to someone reading an historical. Too modern. I also have some understanding of what it felt like to live in other time periods.

Would I want to go there myself? Well, maybe for a weekend (which I have) but I wouldn't want to live there. Besides giving me a feel for what it was like to live in past times, it also gives me a great appreciation for what I have now. Among my favorites are a washing machine and my local classical music station.

Author

The best advice anyone gave me about writing historicals was that you need to experience what you are writing about. The result has been not only more believable settings but a wonderful job teaching history to kids at living history museums.